• David Hacker, Christopher A Jones, Zoe Clowes, Antonio Belli, Zhangjie Su, Murugan Sitaraman, David Davies, Ross Taylor, Elizabeth Flahive, Clare Travis, Nicci O'Neil, and Yvonne Pettigrew.
• Clinical Neuropsychology Department, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Birmingham, UK.
• Arch Clin Neuropsychol. 2017 Mar 1; 32 (2): 215-227.

ObjectiveThis study examines the validity of the NAB Screening Module (screening module of the neuropsychological assessment battery, S-NAB) in an acute traumatic brain injury (TBI) inpatient population and provides psychometric evaluation of an original index sensitive to TBI impairment.MethodThe utility of the S-NAB as a TBI screen was examined using a between groups design. One-hundred and four patients with mild complicated to severe TBI were recruited from a consecutive cohort of patients admitted as inpatients to a UK Major Trauma Centre. Ninety-eight control participants were selected from the S-NAB normative sample. All TBI patients completed the S-NAB during their inpatient stay.ResultsControl participants scored significantly higher than TBI participants on the Total Screening index (t = 3.626, p < 0.01), The Attention index (t = 7.882, p < 0.01), and the Executive index (t = 5.577, p < 0.01). A briefer TBI Impairment index of six subtests was constructed which accurately discriminated TBI patients from normative controls (t = 9.9, p < 0.01; Cohen's d = 1.54). The TBI index had excellent classification accuracy (AUC = 0.83), superior to that of the standard S-NAB indices. The TBI Index, Attention Index, and Total Screening Index demonstrated increasing impairment with increased severity of injury.ConclusionsThe S-NAB TBI index is a robust, reliable screening index for use with acute TBI patients, which is sensitive to the effects of acute TBI. It affords a briefer cognitive screen than the S-NAB and demonstrates a dose response relationship to TBI severity.© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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